


Something Borrowed

by phoenixflight



Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Infidelity, Light Angst, Multi, Relationship Negotiation, Tess pov, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28473270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: Tess has lived a lucky life; born gumming the proverbial spoon, given the best education, with connections to edge herself into the small world of art curating. Know your blind spots, Rusty would say. But in the champagne-froth of Tess’s charmed life, she misses the fact that Danny really is too good to be true.
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan, Danny Ocean/Tess Ocean, Danny Ocean/Tess Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Something Borrowed

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic more than a year ago, I believe, and it wouldn't have gotten finished in 2020 without [Joss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin) encouraging me to return to it, and then basically single-handedly plotting and directing the sex scene. Thanks Joss. <3

When Tess was a little girl, her mother used to warn her that nice men might seem boring, but that if she wants a good life and a good husband, she’d better get used to a little bit of dull. Here’s the thing about Danny - he’s never been dull a day in his life. He’s brilliant. He’s charming, witty, charismatic. He sparkles. 

When Tess meets him, she thinks her mother was wrong. Danny’s nice -  _ lovely  _ \- and not boring at all. He holds the attention of everyone in a room, and when he smiles at you, you feel as if you’re the only person on earth. 

Tess isn’t stupid - she knows perfection is impossible. He’s just enough of a scoundrel to give rough edges to the diamond of his personality, so that’s he’s not so perfect as to be unbelievable. He can sometimes be dismissive and distracted, there are moments where Tess feels he almost forgets she’s there, but then he’ll turn that smile on her and she is reassured. During their brief engagement, Tess’s best friend, Julie, had asked, “Isn’t there  _ anything  _ wrong with him?” 

Tess considered, sipping a mimosa. “He leaves his socks on the floor.” 

“You lucky bitch,” Julie sighed. “That’s just like you, finding one of the really good ones.” 

And that’s the thing - Tess has lived a lucky life; born gumming the proverbial spoon, given the best education, with connections to edge herself into the small world of art curating. Know your blind spots, Rusty would say. But in the champagne-froth of Tess’s charmed life, she misses the fact that Danny really is too good to be true. 

She’s swept up in a whirl of house-hunting, china-choosing, and bed-buying when she meets Rusty for the first time. He strikes her as odd. He’s colorful, eccentric in a way that doesn’t happen by accident. Certainly no one ever put on a shirt that color by accident. Very  _ California _ , she thinks at the time. 

The oddest thing about him though is how Danny acts with him. By that time Tess has met a few of Danny’s friends - and for such a friendly guy he doesn’t have as many as one would expect - and his sister, the only remaining family. Danny doesn’t act with Rusty like he does around any of the others. He… relaxes. It’s a minute change but Tess has always been excellent at reading people. Danny stops watching his back with Rusty around.

Rusty is cool but polite toward her, seeming bemused more than anything else by their engagement. “Never thought Danny would get married,” he says at one point, over a dinner of filet mignon and lobster. 

Danny grins at him and slouches down a little in his seat. She can tell from the way Danny’s thigh moves next to hers that he’s knocked his leg into Rusty’s under the table. “Never thought I’d meet a woman like Tess,” he says, and it makes her warm. 

After dinner, they all go back to the apartment together and Tess goes to bed while the two men stay up drinking. She hears their muffled voices through the wall as she falls asleep, and thinks that they speak in a different rhythm together than she’s ever heard from Danny before. 

The ceremony is at the courthouse, and Rusty is one of the witnesses. He wears a bright blue suit that belongs in a casino, not a wedding, and his face is inscrutable the entire time except for the moment he leans over to sign the marriage certificate. He looks up at Danny, and the moment is so fast that Tess doesn’t get a chance to glance at her new husband’s expression, but Rusty rolls his eyes and shakes his head a little as he signs. Afterward he smiles genuinely enough as he congratulates her, but she can’t quite shake the lingering sense of being somehow left out of something at her own wedding. 

Rusty isn’t around as much during their marriage as she expects him to be, given the undeniable intimacy between him and Danny. Danny says he travels for work, and sometimes they get postcards from random places - Milwaukee, Honolulu, Santa Fe, Milan. They are always garish pictures, and on the back Rusty writes mostly about food. Danny looks sad sometimes when they arrive. 

“Why doesn’t he visit more, if you miss him so much?” she asks at one point, holding a card from La Crosse, Wisconsin, with a picture of the world’s largest six pack on it. 

Danny blinks away the far-off expression in his eyes until all that’s left is his smile. “He’s not one for settling down. I think it makes him a little itchy to think about me doing it.” 

What do you two even have in common, she wants to ask, but allows Danny to distract her with his mouth and his hands. The longer Rusty stays away, the easier it is to forget about him. 

Tess realizes her first mistake, with the blind spot and the silver spoon, when she gets a call from Rusty, telling her that her husband’s been arrested. In the haze of shock and horror, she wonders why Danny’s first call was to Rusty and not her. 

It’s not until later that she realizes her second mistake was Rusty himself. 

She moves on. Really, she does. She had her heart broken, and also her pride trampled. It’s humiliating to explain to all her friends and family that the man she married is a criminal. Tess isn’t someone who is used to messing up, certainly not this spectacularly. 

She meets Benedict at a gallery showing. He’s in New York on business, but he lives in Las Vegas, he says. “I could never live in the desert,” she laughs, twisting her hair and knowing that she’s flirting. 

Benedict holds her gaze. “I think the sun would suit you.” 

He’s good looking enough, nice enough, and boring. The antidote, she thinks, to Danny’s glamor. Acting as director of his private gallery will look great on her resume in any case. 

Then, Danny reappears, like a bad penny and twice as shiny. He looks good. A little more gray in his hair, a few more lines around his eyes, but he’s kept in shape and his smile makes her stomach flutter the same as it always did. 

When it all goes down, it’s Rusty’s voice on the phone telling her to turn on the TV. She watches, and knows that she’s playing right into Danny’s hand when she walks out on Benedict, knows that she’s a piece in a game he’s winning, but can’t bring herself to care. She’s angry at Benedict even though she knew they weren’t in love, angry at herself for ending up with another kind of con man. At least Danny cared enough to fight for her. 

When the squad car pulls away from the Bellagio and leaves her standing on the Strip with nothing but her purse and her jacket, she’s just beginning to panic when her phone rings again. “Take a cab to the Emerald Sands Motel on Highway 95,” Rusty tells her, and she does. 

He’s waiting under a buzzing streetlight in front of the motel office, wearing an eye-searing shirt and eating goldfish crackers. He flicks her a room key. “Room 211. You going back to your mom’s place in Westchester?” 

“How do you know where my parents live?” 

He ignores her question. “I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.” 

“Why are you here?” 

“Danny wants me to look out for you.” The street light throws his face into harsh lines and shadows. His eyes are unreadable. “That’s what I do. I look after things so Danny doesn’t have to.” 

“You’re his… what? Butch to his Sundance? Thelma to his Louise?” 

“Something like that.” Rusty crumples the empty goldfish bag and shoves it in his pocket. “But if anyone’s Robert Redford, it’s me. I’ll pick you up at 10 for the airport.” 

“Do I get a say?” 

“Sure.” He nods to the desert night, the empty highway. “Road’s right there.” 

She looks down at the key in her hand, the scratched numbers 211. “10 am,” she says. “Thanks.” 

Danny’s been away for three months when Rusty shows up in Westchester. He appears around the end of the aisle in the supermarket as she’s buying groceries - living with her parents again means doing chores like a teenager - and she’s so shocked she almost drops a bottle of soy sauce. 

“Thought we ought to catch up,” he says, taking the low sodium soy sauce from her limp hand and swapping it out on the shelf with the classic which he drops into her shopping cart. “Got anything perishable?” 

She shakes her head silently. 

“Good. Let’s get a drink.” 

They end up in a booth at the back of an Italian restaurant, with the grocery bags at their feet. Rusty is plowing his way through a seafood fettuccine, and Tess is picking at a salad. 

“Danny gets out in three weeks,” Rusty says when he finally slows down with the pasta. “I need to know if you’re in or out.” 

“I haven’t changed my mind.” 

“What’s in it for you?” 

Tess blinks, thrown. “What do you mean?” 

“Why are you going back to him?” 

She flounders. “He’s my husband.” 

“Bad reason.” His mouth is shiny with grease from the meal, and it shouldn’t be appealing at all, but she finds her gaze following his tongue as he licks a bit of sauce off his lower lip. 

She yanks her eyes back up to his. “What do you mean, bad reason?”

Rusty shrugs one shoulder and twirls more pasta around his fork. “I mean you left him once and he was your husband then too. What’s changed?” 

“I know the whole story now. He’s not hiding part of himself from me.” 

“And you’re sure you want that?” His eyes are dark and assessing. 

“Of course I want that!”

“Sometimes people like to have things hidden.” 

“Not me.” She lifts her chin defiantly. “Anyway, it’s only fair. Danny knows everything about me and now it’s mutual. Now we can really be partners.” 

Rusty looks at her for a long moment and then snorts with laughter. 

It’s not deliberately unkind but his genuine amusement makes her bristle. “That’s what your spouse is meant to be, you know. Your partner.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves his fork vaguely. “That’s what I told him.” 

She sits back, processing that, turning it over and over in her mind like a rubix cube. 

“You’re Danny’s partner,” she says slowly. It clicks, like a game piece. Like a roulette ball settling into place. 

Rusty chews and looks at her in silence. 

She has another flash of intuition; the way they move so comfortably in one another’s space, the way they speak a language no one else does. Once she’s thought it she can’t unthink it and she has to know. She opens her mouth and watches Rusty watching her, sees him anticipate the question. He’s so smart, as smart as Danny. How did she miss that? 

“Were you sleeping together?” she asks bluntly because there’s no other way to say it. 

“The thing is,” Rusty says. “That’s not the important part.” 

“Oh my god you were.” Her throat clicks as she swallows and she reaches for the wine. “While we were married?” 

“No.” Rusty’s a con man. If he was lying she would never know. Tess sits back and pushes her half finished salad away from her. “You gonna eat that?” He points with his fork. 

“Be my guest.” 

He digs in shamelessly. If she had been asked to imagine, she would have said that Rusty of the perpetual junk food wouldn’t be a salad person but now she sees it, it makes sense. Rusty eats salad. Rusty doesn’t waste food. Rusty is sleeping with her husband.

“Do you hate me?” she asks. 

“No.”

“Why not?” 

“Not enough of a threat to hate,” Rusty says through a mouthful of lettuce. 

That sinks into her stomach like a stone and she feels sick because the ring of truth is undeniable. 

“You were waiting,” she says. “Those postcards, all that time. You were waiting for him to get tired of me and come back to you.” 

Rusty shrugs. “I was waiting for him to get tired of lying to himself, and come back to his real life.” 

Tess forces herself to breathe deeply and steadily. She is not going to have hysterics in the middle of a restaurant. They sit in silence for long enough that Rusty finishes the salad and returns to the remains of his fettuccine. He’s a slender man - where the hell does he put it all? 

“And he did,” Tess says eventually. “He did go back to his...other life.” 

For the first time, the look Rusty gives her is almost pitying, and that’s the worst part yet. “Of course he did. He’s Danny.” 

“Of course,” she echoes faintly, and realizes that she had the key to her husband in front of her the whole time, and overlooked it. It’s Rusty. 

Rusty drives her back to her parent’s house, seeming unfairly relaxed compared to how shaken Tess is. 

He pulls over at the end of her street, idling. “Do you still want to be there when I pick Danny up?” 

She understands what he’s asking. “Yes.” 

He nods and looks away, both hands on the steering wheel. His jaw works a little. “If you’re in this for the long haul, you should know… Danny’s never been good at fidelity.” 

A rush of icy adrenaline floods through her. “You said he never cheated on me!” 

“What do you think that robbery was?” Rusty laughs, although he doesn’t sound particularly amused. “I told you, the sex wasn’t the important part.” 

“But… I know about the other stuff now. The…” She waves her hands vaguely. “Crime. He doesn’t have to hide it from me.” 

Rusty nods. “I wasn’t expecting that.” His expression is still distant. 

He drops her off at her parent’s house with the groceries. She explains to her mom that she ran into an old friend and got delayed, but her mom doesn’t interrogate her because she’s too busy scolding Tess for buying the wrong kind of soy sauce. 

Rusty comes to pick her up in a different car - a shitty Volvo convertible - the day Danny gets released, and they drive down to Trenton with the windows open, too loud to talk on the highway, making one stop along the way for a bathroom break and a cheeseburger. 

Seeing Danny again is like breathing deeply after being underwater, or maybe sliding beneath the water after too long baking in the sun. He smiles at Tess, greets her with quiet delight, like she’s a pleasant surprise and she feels all her misgivings slide away. No girl likes to be taken for granted. 

Kissing her hand like a gentleman, Danny looks at the ostentatious ring she’s wearing. “You said you sold this.” 

“I said that.” 

“Liar,” he murmurs, leaning in. 

“Thief,” she whispers against his lips, and it’s thrilling, it’s everything she remembered and more because this is the real Danny, all of him. 

Danny kisses her, slides a hand up her thigh, nuzzles her neck, sighs against her hair. Tess feels champagne bubbles tingling all over her body. Then Danny lifts his head and meets Rusty’s eyes in the rearview mirror, the same kind of inscrutable glance that Tess noticed so often before she realized what it meant. Tess’s lips are suddenly cold, wet from their kissing, and Tess rubs the back of her hand across her mouth, catching herself halfway through the movement and fixing her lipstick with her thumb instead. 

In the rearview mirror, Tess can see Rusty’s eyes crinkle at the corners, amused. Unconcerned. Tess swallows. Danny turns his head back to hers, twitches his fingers at the hem of her skirt. “Where are we going?” she asks, for something to do with her mouth. 

“Motel,” Rusty says. 

“What about the…” Danny starts. 

“We’ll lose ‘em,” Rusty finishes. 

“Benedict’s hired goons?” Tess asks. 

Danny pats her leg. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Rus can shake a tail like nobody I’ve ever met.” Rusty snorts, and Danny flashes that boyish was-it-something-I-said smile, and Tess recognizes now how they’ve been hiding in plain sight. Not even bothering to hide, really. She just didn’t know what to look for. She’s grateful when Rusty cranks back the convertible top, and the howl of the wind is a good excuse not to talk. 

As promised, they lose their tail and Rusty pulls into a motel outside Baltimore. Like the one in Vegas, it’s a run-down, mid-century building, with no security cameras in the parking lot. Danny’s wearing the tux he got arrested in, and Rusty’s in an all-cream suit that wouldn’t look out of place at the high rollers table in Atlantic City, and somehow it’s Tess who feels out of place in her modest Chanel dress and pumps as the three of them walk into the office. 

“Two rooms,” Danny says. 

Tess opens her mouth before she can think better of it and says, “One. One room.” 

Rusty and Danny both turn to look at her and the matronly woman behind the desk raises an eyebrow, but after a brief pause, Danny says, “One room.” 

They park behind the building, out of sight of the road, and carry their bags up the concrete steps to the room on the second floor. Danny doesn’t have anything of his own but Rusty has an extra duffel that he tosses to him. Tess would have packed a suitcase for Danny but she doesn’t have any of his clothes anymore. 

The room has two double beds with garish bedspreads. Standing in the doorway with two men beside her, it seems small. Rusty tosses his bag on the bed closest to the window, and looks at her. They’re both looking at her, expectant. Tess looks at the remaining bed. Kissing Danny in the car she’d been ready, for a few minutes, to climb into his lap right there. Tess sits on the edge of the bed. The sheets are a little threadbare, but smell clean. 

Tess wonders what the hell she was thinking but she likes the way the two of them are still watching at her - like she’s intriguing, capable of holding their attention. The power of it thrums in the pit of her stomach. She knows, now, how little else holds Danny’s attention when Rusty is in a room. 

“Sit,” she orders Danny, gesturing to the other bed. Looking bemused and indulgent, Danny does. Rusty is looking at her like she’s a pet that’s just done an unexpected trick. She wants to wipe those expressions off their faces. “I want to watch you two together.” 

Rusty’s eyebrows rise sharply, and Danny gives her a glossy smile. “Watch us what?” 

“Do what you do,” she says, crossing her arms. Rusty chews his lower lip, eyeing her thoughtfully. Danny’s face creases in an expression of polite incomprehension, and Tess knows she’s about to be lied to. “Don’t.” Danny’s eyes flicker to Rusty, and she feels a flare of anger in her belly at the whole silent conversation they have in a split second. “I want to watch the two of you. Together,” she repeats, heavy on each word, and sees Danny look to Rusty again for reassurance, for balance. 

Rusty strips off the cream suit jacket and kneels on the bed beside Danny as Danny glances between the two of them, brow furrowed. Rusty leans in. Watching their lips meet makes her heart pound. It’s a careful kiss, but Danny lifts a hand to clutch Rusty’s arm, as if he can’t help the reflex. Danny’s broad, familiar hands look strange gripping Rusty’s biceps, wrinkling his shirt. 

Tess swallows. “Are you gay?” she blurts. 

Breaking the kiss, Danny looks over at her. “Of course not, Tess.” Rusty licks his lips, glancing at her from under lowered eyelids, expression unreadable. 

“It would explain Rusty’s suits,” she jokes weakly. 

“Nothing explains Rusty’s suits.” Danny squeezes Rusty’s arm and releases him. “Was that what you wanted to know?”

She hesitates, looking at Rusty who has his hand on Danny’s thigh. “Take your clothes off. Both of you.” She’s not sure if she’s surprised when they obey. 

They undress, unfairly graceful, both of them. Danny is mostly unchanged, though it’s been years since she’s seen him naked. He kept in shape in prison. He’s wearing silk boxers underneath and Tess thinks how much he must have hated prison jumpsuits. 

She wonders suddenly whether she really wants to share her first time in so long with someone else - and then wonders whether Rusty is thinking the same thing. Both men are looking at her again, and Tess’s heart pounds. She’s too warm, sweat sticky on the back of her neck, at her collar. Standing, she jerks her chin at Rusty, and turns slightly to show the back of her dress. “Unzip me.” 

Danny makes a slight movement - he’s the one who’s unzipped her a hundred times, lips on the back of her neck, cock against her ass, fingers on bare skin. She glares at him and he stays put as Rusty steps behind her. 

He doesn’t hurry but he doesn’t make a show of it either. The zipper is loud in the quiet room. The noise of the highway hums outside. Tess can hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She turns, dress slipping down her shoulders, and Rusty is very close. Her breath catches. He quirks his lips at her, a little amused. A little challenging. She kisses him. 

He tastes a little like the cherry Jolly Rancher he was sucking in the car, and he kisses delicately, with precision. Danny sucks a sharp breath and Tess feels her body clench in response. Rusty angles her face toward Danny as he kisses her. His other hand is respectful on her back, where her zipper vees open, palm warm and dry on her bare skin. 

When she blinks her eyes open, Danny is watching them both with his mouth slightly open, one hand curled loosely over the shape of his hard-on in his boxers. He looks uncertain. It’s an odd expression on his face, one she’s rarely seen and hardly recognizes. Rusty lifts his head from kissing her neck to glance at Danny, and Danny’s gaze slides off her like water, meets Rusty’s. 

Danny’s face settles into some kind of resolve. Tess can’t read it, but Rusty starts sliding her dress down her arms. She steps back sharply and his hands fall away. “Wait,” she says, taking a deep breath to calm herself. But they’ve come too far to stop now without it feeling like… some kind of defeat. She’s not sure what exactly she’s trying to prove, but she’s going to push on until she’s proved it. 

“Show me what you do together,” she says again. 

Rusty cocks his head at her, and she lifts her eyebrows in a silent challenge. He kneels in the narrow space between the beds, between Danny’s knees. He’s looking at Tess but Danny is looking at Rusty. Tess crosses her arms over her chest, trying to look impatient rather than prudish. Rusty’s mouth curves - not quite a grin. Then he bends forward and sucks Danny’s cock through the silk of his boxers. 

Danny lets out a bark of startled laughter, looking up at Tess. She bites her lip and meets his gaze. Danny has one hand lifted above Rusty’s head, not quite touching. “Tess?” Danny asks. 

Tess sets her jaw firmly. “Show me.” 

Rusty pulls his cock out, not quite fully hard. Danny’s eyelashes flutter as Rusty closes his mouth around the head. He draws in a hiss of breath, attention snapping back to Rusty. Tess takes a shaky breath of her own.

Danny scoots closer to the edge of the bed so that Rusty can take more of him - deeper than Tess ever could. “Christ,” Danny mutters under his breath. His hips rock and Tess can hear the wet noise his cock makes in Rusty’s throat. It makes the pit of Tess’s stomach turn over, molten. 

Rusty’s eyes are closed. Danny cards his fingers through Rusty’s short hair, palm cupping his jaw. Rusty tilts his head into the touch and Danny tightens his grip, making Rusty moan. He never pulled Tess’s hair like that, always a gentleman when she had her mouth on him. She feels like she’s on a runaway train, nauseous with acceleration. 

Rusty pulls back, lips gleaming and swollen, spit on his chin. His hair is standing up in spikes from Danny’s fingers. “Do you-?” he starts, and Danny says, “If you-” 

“Of course,” Rusty says, and sits back on his heels. 

“Tess?” 

She startles when Danny reaches out to her, but lets him catch her by the wrist and pull her down on the bed beside him. He starts kissing her neck, where Rusty had his mouth briefly ten minutes before, cups her breasts through the lace of her bra, thumbs her nipple, sweeps a palm down the sensitive curve of her stomach to tease over her panties. She shivers, closes her eyes. 

Danny presses kisses all over her collarbones, nips lightly at her skin, rubs her clit until she’s soaked through her panties and clutching at her arm, keeps his mouth busy against her body. Occasional wet noises suggest that Rusty’s mouth is busy too, but she keeps her eyes tightly shut. 

Danny is talented with his hands, as good as she remembers. He tugs her panties aside, slips his fingers inside her, making her arch up sharply. He’s breathing hard, forehead pressed against her sternum, mouthing at one nipple, scraping the lace and his teeth over it. Her hand flexes on his back, sweat beneath her fingertips. 

Tess’s orgasm catches her by surprise. She clenches down on Danny’s fingers, feels him groan and shake. When she blinks her eyes open Rusty is sitting back on his heels, wiping his mouth, Danny’s cock flushed and softening against his thigh. The mattress shifts as Rusty kneels on the bed on the other side of Danny, erection stretching the front of his briefs. Spitting in his palm, Danny slides his hand inside Rusty’s underwear and muscles jump visibility in Rusty’s stomach. 

Danny leaves one hand on her side as he touches Rusty, and Tess tucks her cheek against his shoulder, where she can close her eyes and listen to his heart beating. She can hear the rustle of fabric and the swish of damp skin on skin, the way Rusty’s breath hitches. The silence makes everything feel too close and too real. Danny shifts, dislodging her and startling her eyes open, and she sees them kissing again, not restrained and self-conscious like before; open mouthed, messy, hungry. Rusty makes a choked noise and stiffens, and Tess turns her head away as he comes in Danny’s hand. 

Afterward, Rusty offers her the first shower. She’s still curled around Danny, his arms warm. Tess thinks about getting up, leaving them alone together, and shakes her head. Rusty disappears into the bathroom instead. The water turns on with a honking of old pipes. 

“Are you okay?” Danny asks softly, all for her. 

There’s only one answer she can give, the same decision she made in the lobby of the Bellagio. She nods. 

“You’re amazing, you know that?” He kisses her bare shoulder and pulls the sheets up around them. “Love you, Tess.” 

She falls asleep listening to the water run in the bathroom. 

In the morning, Tess wakes curled against her husband for the first time in years. They kiss lazily, until Tess wrinkles her nose at their shared morning breath and gets up to shower. Danny brushes his teeth while she turns on the water, the two of them bumping shoulders in the tiny bathroom. It’s both like and unlike being back at their big house in Connecticut, where they’d had his-and-hers sinks and gotten ready together in the mornings without ever knocking elbows. 

By the time Tess has finished her makeup and emerged from the bathroom, Danny and Rusty are sitting at the small laminated table, and the room smells of scones and coffee. There are bakery bags and three take out cups between them, and Danny is doodling on the back of a napkin while Rusty eats a muffin and points at things that Danny is drawing, leaving crumbs in his wake. “No, no, it’d be titanium-alloy. Mmm, say 600 watts to be safe.”

They both look up at her when she steps into the room, and she feels a little thrill at the lull in their conversation as she lets the towel slip lower around her chest and crosses to her suitcase. 

Rusty clears his throat. “Don’t forget to account for -” 

“Barometric pressure, I know,” Danny murmurs, and Tess shakes her head as she dresses. “Seventy five feet of copper wire?” 

“Better make it a hundred,” Rusty says, mouth full. “We could ask -”

“He’s retired.” 

“What about -?”

“Unreliable.” 

Rusty stuffs the last of the muffin in his mouth and makes a muffled noise of agreement as Tess comes to the table. There are only two chairs, but Danny pats his knee, and she settles on his lap, looking down at the incomprehensible drawing. 

“What’s this?” she asks, and they share a glance. She feels the subtle shift she’s learned to recognize as Danny reorients his mental universe away from Rusty. 

“A job,” he says, and she smiles encouragingly. “Some valuable blueprints at a drilling company in Anchorage. Don’t worry, it should be in and out once the planning’s done, we’ll be back before you know it. Just another kind of business trip.” His smile is playful, glossy. 

“You could take me with you,” she says. 

“It won’t be till next winter. Trust me, you don’t want to be in Alaska in January.” He presses a kiss against her bicep, the closest part of her. “We’ll take you with us the next time we go someplace nice, like Rome.” 

“Rome’s nice,” Rusty agrees. 

“Remember that place -?” 

“- with the pastries.”

“We were behind schedule all week after that,” Danny finishes, grinning. “Anyway, copper wire, fuse box? Like that time with -” 

“Yeah.” 

“Except without the alternator.” Danny’s arm is warm around her hip, but Tess feels cold. Rusty told her, back in the Italian restaurant, and she should have believed him. The sex was never the important part. That’s her third mistake, she realizes afterward. Con men are most dangerous when they are telling the truth. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


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